The Duel
The Duel is the eighth episode of the first season of ''How I Met Your Mother''. The episode was written by Gloria Calderon Kellet and directed by Pamela Fryman. It first aired on November 14, 2005. Barney's Blog for the episode can be found here. Plot Summary Lily moves in with Ted and Marshall and although it was Ted's idea to ask Lily to move in, he starts to worry that the apartment changes too much with Lily there. Another issue for Ted is who will keep the apartment after Lily and Marshall got married. In the end, a real fight starts between Ted and Marshall over the apartment. Synopsis Lily decides to take Robin over to her apartment (which she herself has not been to in three months) while they are out, but when they get to Lily's apartment, they find that the landlady has passed away, and Lily's apartment is now a Chinese restaurant called Madame Chew's House of Dumplings. Lily even sees many of her personal belongings still there. Lily and Robin immediately head over to Ted and Marshall's apartment to explain the situation, and Ted tells Lily that she is welcome to live with them now, "since you practically live here anyway." Barney warns Ted that things will change with Lily officially living at the apartment, and that eventually they'll force him out of the apartment. Ted doesn't believe him, but after he finds "Shockey" (his very old coffee pot that always gave him an electrical jolt) in the garbage and replaced by Lily's coffee pot, he begins to think Barney is right. He feels even more threatened when Marshall tells him he wants to hang Lily's painting where the two swords hang. In order to try to reclaim his territory, Ted begins to label all of his food and then orders a life-sized English phone booth for the apartment. He begins to argue with Marshall about who should get the apartment, which leads to a duel with the swords that hung on the wall. Both consider this duel awesome even though they are fighting for the apartment and mad at each other. Events become tragic when a coffee table collapses under Marshall's weight, and he stumbles backward and stabs Lily with the sword. After she is patched up at the hospital, Lily tells them that she doesn't want to live there once they are married because she feels that it is a manly environment. Meanwhile, Barney has created a revolutionary idea in the dating world: The Lemon Law. Similar in nature to lemon laws for used cars, Barney's new lemon law for dating gives a person five minutes to decide if the date will go on for the rest of the night or not. They can call the date off for any reason in the first five minutes, avoiding bad dates. Barney goes on to say that it will become "a thing" after "lemon-lawing" two different women on dates. Robin argues that it takes longer for people to get to know each other, so she challenges Barney by taking a nerdy guy obsessed with Star Trek on a date. Barney calls her to try to get her to use the lemon law, but she refuses. The guy asks if it was a fake call from the hospital, and she tells him that she would never do that. Only a few minutes later, she gets a real call from the hospital telling her that Marshall has accidentally stabbed Lily, and leaves, feeling a bit guilty. At the hospital Barney reveals that his lemon law is now "a thing," as he had just been "lemon-lawed" by a girl earlier that night. He also regrets not calling it Barney's Law so as to get some name recognition or fame. Once Lily is released from the hospital, they go eat Chinese dumplings at the restaurant in Lily's old apartment. Continuity *Alyson Hannigan wears the white shirt with the blue toile design that she wears in this episode's opening montage again in Zip, Zip, Zip. *Referring to her picture from Homecoming, Lily says, "Yeah, the bangs were a mistake." In the flashback to Lily's prom in Best Prom Ever, Lily does, in fact, have unflattering bangs. *While arguing with Ted about the apartment, Marshall says that they might need a second room sooner than Ted thinks because they aren't that careful with their birth control. In the following episode Belly Full Of Turkey, Lily worries that she might be pregnant when her period is late. Marshall does mention that if Ted is presuming to have Barney as his roommate, he cooks naked. In the episode World's Greatest Couple, Barney does not have any food in his apartment and thus far cannot cook. *Barney mentions he is on a date with a girl he met online. In the episode How I Met Everyone Else, he makes fun of Ted for meeting a girl by playing World of Warcraft. *Barney is not able to use the chopsticks at the end of the show suggesting he does not eat Chinese food as stated in The Best Burger in New York. *This is the first episode where Robin is assumed to be a prostitute. It also occurs in Best Prom Ever, Slap Bet, The Naked Man, and ''Of Course''. *The swordfight between Ted and Marshall is mentioned by Future Ted as one of the few fights he's been in, in the episode The Fight. *Marshall accidentally wounds Lily for the second time; the first time occured in the ''Pilot''. Gallery The Duel.png|Ted and Marshall duel over who gets the apartment after Marshall's wedding. Memorable Quotes Notes and Trivia Goofs and Errors Allusions and Outside References Music *Tubthumping by Chumbawamba Other Notes *Overall, this is the eighth episode. Reception References See also External links *[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0606113/ The Duel] at the Internet Movie Database *[http://www.tv.com/show/how-i-met-your-mother/the-duel/episode/551095/summary.html The Duel] at TV.com Category: Episodes Category:Season 1